1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to printed circuit board installation in electronic devices. More particularly, the invention relates to an adjustable carrier for Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) cards that allows any card to be engaged by the carrier to be "hot plugged" into an electronic device.
2. Prior Art
Electronic equipment technicians, and indeed some private individuals as well, are aware that printed circuit boards (PCB) are employed within many pieces of electronic equipment. It is also known by these individuals that these "cards" can in some cases be removed for repair of a device or an upgrade thereof or simply to alter the operating parameters thereof Most notable are computer devices where different functions or memory capacity can be needed.
Conventionally, the changing of a card is done by removing the cover of the machine and manually removing the existing card and plugging in a new one. This procedure may be complicated further in systems where entire banks of cards must be removed above the one being replaced or the bank of cards where one is to be replaced must removed. In such instances the machine must be shut down. Since both the shut down and start up procedure can be time consuming, shut down is undesirable.
More recently, some electronic equipment has been designed to accept a card carrier comprising a frame with means to insert the card into an electrical receptacle while the cover is still in place on the device. This type of an operation is known as "hot plugging". While the existing hot plugging PCI card carriers are effective and beneficial for their intended purpose, they are card specific. Unfortunately, then, one needs a specific carrier for every type of card he wishes to use.
Examples of such carriers are described in detail in U.S. Ser. No. 08/766,566, filed Dec. 13, 1996 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,868,585, all assigned to the assignee hereof and both fully incorporated herein by reference.
The art is in need of an adjustable carrier which is capable of accepting and supporting many different types of PCI cards for hot plugging operations.